If any of you are reading this from my blogger site (and not cross-posted) you will no doubt have seen the quote thats at the very top banner:
"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother" - Kahlil Gibran
The quote is from a larger work that I would encourage anyone to read, which is "Jesus" by Kahlil Gibran, a famous lebanese poet. The book is a collection of poems based from the point of view of people featured in the New Testament, including Herod, Pilate, all the disciples, and even Caiphas the high priest. The poems are from the Gibran's personal view of Jesus, which probably differs from a Biblical understanding, but regardless have some amazing insights into faith and belief. The above quote is from a poem written from the perspective of "Thomas the Doubter."
The reason I love this quote so much is because I think it really illustrates a facet of spiritual faith that most people prefer to skip over; some call it lukewarmness, others call it the midnight of the soul, and some prefer to call it weakness. Of course all of these views will agree on one thing, which is that the experience of doubt is crippling. Doubt can bring the happiest person to tears, the go getter to complacency; doubt shakes the very pillars of our being, and seeing the collapse of all you know to be true can be a fate nearly worse than death itself. Yet doubt, as the quote illustrates, is connected to faith.
So can doubt be good?
Despite how crippling it is, I think in my own life I've seen just how important doubt is; the way I see it, doubt is not weakness, but rather the natural consequence of living a life of worth.
For those of you who know me, you know that I am an inherently doubtful person, and doubt has played a huge role in my life. Doubt chased me away from my Christian upbringing into stubborn agnosticism; doubt used to haunt me at night, never allowing me to sleep; doubt hurt my relationships, and had I let it grow unchecked, would have made me complacent; a useless vessel with no purpose in life. The main way that doubt has torn me apart is that, in many cases, it spurred me to inaction rather than encouraging me to search for the truth.
So is doubt bad? The answer is not clear cut, but I feel the best way to look at is to ask yourself the all important question: what is the fruit? Does my doubt fuel me to search out the answers, or does it mire me in self deprecation and depression? The distinction is very very important because doubt is, despite its pain, important. Anything that is worth believing should also be worth doubting; and anyone who has ever done anything worthwhile in life had their doubts about what they were doing. Doubt is proof that whatever you are wrestling over is very important.
For many years, this is where I would have stopped. I saw doubt as a necessary part of life, and an intellectual exercise, but always ignored the emotional and healing aspect.
As an agnostic, I remember reading several arguments and historical accounts of Jesus, giving some pretty convincing evidence the Gospels were historically accurate and that the claims of Christianity should be considered.Funny enough, this was not the thing that ended up bringing me to follow Christ.
Beyond historical documents and apologetic arguments, I knew that reading Jesus's words had hit me in a place that no one had ever hit me before, and that He was the most amazing thing to happen to human history. Many philosophers wanted to convince my mind, but Christ wanted my heart. Despite the many philosophers I had read, Jesus Christ was the only name I heard echoing in my head as a 17-year old agnostic. Depressed and afflicted with doubt, I was on the edge of taking my own life, and yet I could hear this Jesus in my head, saying I was worth it, beloved. Nietzsche made me feel powerful, but Christ made me feel loved.
Overcoming intellectual doubt, though important, is only part of the process because doubt is almost always rooted in emotional hurt. When the father of the demon possessed boy cried out to Jesus for his unbelief, it was not simply "show me proof" but rather "Help me!" When Thomas doubted, the evidence Christ gave was not "here I am" but rather "come and see!" Jesus was willing many times to argue people, but He never neglected people's need for more than an intellectual ideal. I dont find myself as a follower of Christ because he's a cool idea, rather because, in the purest sense of the word, He saved me. At the end of the day, people in doubt and suffering want more than the facts; they want a Savior.
I still experience times of doubt, because I am a doubter by nature, but I am learning more and more how doubt and the search for truth is a transformation of both heart and mind. Letting the Truth transform my outlook, but also letting the Truth heal me of all the places I am hurt. As a closing note, I think Kahlil Gibran put it more succinctly than I will ever be able to:
"For Doubt will not know truth till his wounds are healed and restored"
~Jared
